


A Hundred Days

by EKthered



Category: Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Coda, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery, Season Finale, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 08:19:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18517555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EKthered/pseuds/EKthered
Summary: All hands of capable standing swarmed the Enterprise Med-bay. Bridge crew and captain and airmen replaced batteries in healing kits, cut bloody uniforms from torn skin, shifted bodies, and held hands, whispering soothing words quietly over the shrill beeps and hums of the equipment.When every soul that could be saved was out of danger, Pike glanced wearily to his Vulcan. Spock had his hands on a young engineer’s arm, letting the boy cling to his wrist like a lifeline, but his eyes were red and staring, unblinking, out the thin window of the make-shift medical bay.The captain stands, motions for a nurse to replace the science officer, and pulls Spock to his feet. Dark eyes slide from the window to the face of a captain, and Pike sees his officer on the brink of… something.





	A Hundred Days

Twelve Hours after the Sixth Signal

 

All hands of capable standing swarmed the Enterprise Med-bay. Bridge crew and captain and airmen replaced batteries in healing kits, cut bloody uniforms from torn skin, shifted bodies, and held hands, whispering soothing words quietly over the shrill beeps and hums of the equipment.

When every soul that could be saved was out of danger, Pike glanced wearily to his Vulcan. Spock had his hands on a young engineer’s arm, letting the boy cling to his wrist like a lifeline, but his eyes were red and staring, unblinking, out the thin window of the make-shift medical bay.

The captain stands, motions for a nurse to replace the science officer, and pulls Spock to his feet. Dark eyes slide from the window to the face of a captain, and Pike sees his officer on the brink of… something.

Spock’s quarters are closer. He tugs, each step becoming more precarious, heavier, the Vulcan’s breathing hitching and changing and unsteady, like his gait, until they’re outside his refuge, a dark smudge of sparkfire ash on the door. Pike demands entrance, the ship complies, and they’re inside, door closing and Spock’s knees are out and they’re sinking, Spock’s entire frame quaking.

“I couldn’t – she’s –“ he gasps rapidly, “I _need_ her, and she’s –

“Spock, Spock, just breathe,” Pike commands gently, hands and palms pressing firmly into the twin chords along his spine, feeling his too-low heart pounding furiously in his center. The Vulcan makes an utterly shattered noise between desperate breaths and Pike gathers him up like a son, murmuring nonsense, rocking back and forth on the cold starship floor.

“She’s gone, and she said she’d send us,” his voice quakes, muffled, dispersing into Pike’s collar bone, “a seventh signal, but it’s not here, and she’s gone but what if they _died_ -“

“Breathe with me,” Pike rumbles, “Focus, on the breath, I’m with you, I’m here.”

Spock shakes his head, nose damp and crunching against Pike’s sweat-soaked filthy uniform. The captain feels the wetness and realizes his Vulcan is openly weeping, emotions spilling out of him with unprecedented force. Gut-deep concern colors Pike’s face for a split second before he closes his eyes, bringing his hand up to cup the mop of dark hair and skull of his science officer.

“We, we were apart, such a waste, but she always had me, was with me-“

“She still is, and we’ve got you,” Pike sooths into the crown of his head. “I’ve got you.”

Spock’s fingers curl into his captain’s biceps.

They stay that way for a long time.

 

Four Days after the Sixth Signal

 

The tow to the nearest star base is mind-numbingly slow. The bridge crew, despite the ferocity of battle remained mostly intact, save for a few dings and fractures.

While Pike rests, Una sits in the captain’s chair, allowing Spock to sit board-straight at her station. He watches, endlessly watches out the view screen at the stars.

Pike’s briefed them all on the last moments of Discovery, and they know what he’s looking for.

After four hours, she comes to stand behind him and places a hand on his shoulder.

For a moment there’s no reaction, but then she feels a barely perceptible shift of his weight into her fingers.

 

Seven Days after the Sixth Signal

 

“We’re really doing this,” Tyler murmurs.

“Yeah,” Pike nods.

 “It’s logical,” Spock agrees in an even tone, belaying the difficulty it must take to eradicate your own sister from your life.

“They have done us the greatest of services,” L’Rhell announces with brevity. “She and her crew deserve songs in the oldest halls. To… lie, cover up their sacrifice –“

Spock swallows hard. Keeps his gaze straight ahead on the conference room bulkhead.

“It’s necessary to prevent this from happening again,” Number One interjects. “They’d understand.”

“We’re in agreement, then,” Tyler proposes.

Pike’s eyes flicker around the room. Everyone nods. Spock nods, then returns his attention to the window, ever watching the stars.

 

Fourteen Days after the Sixth Signal

 

The tribunal was finally over. The Enterprise crew and comrades would have to wait to discover exactly how history would remember the last few months of their lives, but it appeared Burnham, Saru, Cornwell, and the entire crew of the lost ship would be memorialized.

Just never spoken of in the living tense.

 There was a new kind of closeness on board the Enterprise. They’d always been a tight-knit crew, but now..

Medical Officer Bryce had come to Pike with understated concern which much of the bridge crew shared. The Vulcan remained inactive from duty and was spending far more time awake than at rest, harbored in various quiet nooks ship-wide where a porthole view of the stars was available.

“I want you to give him something – that boy _needs sleep_ ,” the doctor had commanded his captain, pressing a hypo into his hands. “Convince him. Sneak up on him with it if you have to, but those’r _my_ orders.”

For a time, Pike let him be. Then he started to seek out the officer, just sitting with him, quiet, present.

Then, in the ready room with privacy control, sitting side by side on his sofa, bay window wide and large for him to see the stars, Spock began to tell him little bits and pieces of his childhood, things Pike had never hoped to hear after a year and a half of stoic silence when inquired about anything familial.

It was in these small moments that Pike came to know Michael in away he’d never have known just as a commanding officer. Her failures, her humor, her resilience; all such a departure from the way Spock had spoken to her in the beginning of their time together on the Discovery.

And then, and only after a conversation like this, splayed before the stars of the recovering Enterprise, would Spock’s eyes close, and Pike would glare at the hypo spray, hidden in his drawers, and pull the young man close, letting the catharsis of spoken words be enough to urge the Vulcan into a true rest. Spock allowed the vulnerability, leaning heavy against his captain and Pike relished the secret relief that this being had returned to them instead of jettisoning forward in time with the rest of Discovery’s crew. Losing all of that family _and_ Spock would have been too much.

 

Twenty-Two days after the Sixth Signal

 

Each day was just a little better. Not whole, but better. Spock’s mother had come, and Pike watched one grieving version of Spock disappear in to his quarters, and another appear hours later, a more at peace, comfortable Vulcan.

Before her departure she’s taken the captain’s elbow and squeezed.

“Thank you, for being there for him,” she’d said with the love only a mother could convey to a son’s protector. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

 

Fourty-Six days after the Sixth Signal

 

“Time is relative,” Spock says, sipping his unfathomably hot orange-reddish soup. Number One and Pike watch with distress as steam curls up before the Vulcan’s nose, into his open mouth as he lifts the lip to his mouth. He doesn’t seem phased.

“Perhaps, for us, it has been over a month, but for her, just a matter of moments have passed,” he theorizes as he sets down his bowl.

“Absolutely,” Ensign Owens agrees, staring pointedly at the others to offer support of the sentiment.

 “Spock, there’s not a doubt in my mind. You’ll get your signal,” the captain agrees.

His dark eyes flicker up to meet his, hesitant. He finds only calm trust on Pike’s face.

He nods.

 

Seventy-One days after the Sixth Signal

 

Progress continues on the Enterprise as it lies in wait at the docking station; the structure is all there again, though naked and hollow between support beams of the frontal decks.

Pike admits to Una he will never not see, feel, Cornwell there, a silent guardian, protecting the lives of so many people.

They drink too much that night, and he lets her see exactly how the death of the Admiral weighs on him. He feels it hard the next morning. Spock joins him at the commissary table and silently offers him a second cup of coffee.

 

Ninety days after the Sixth Signal

 

His door chimes something godawful early. Pike groans, rises from bed, pads across his floor, opens the door, finds a trembling Spock in loose sleep pants and shirt, bloodshot eyes, uncertain expression, embarrassed, perhaps.

Pike takes him by the arm and leads him inside, makes him a cup of tea, sits beside the younger officer and props up his feet on his coffee table, folds his arms, ready to listen to the Vulcan, but falls asleep again while Spock quietly calms himself from the nightmare. The Vulcan is still comforted to not be alone, with someone who knew her, and who he can remember her with.

“Michael,” he whispers, the familiarity of her name easy on his tongue. “I’m doing what you said. I’m going to reach, and keep reaching.”

Pike gives a little snore in response, and Spock allows himself a small smile, the first in a very long time.

 

Ninety-Seven days after the Sixth Signal

 

Number One bumps Pike’s shoulder in the turbo lift.

“I _heard,”_ she whispers, “That Spock contacted his father.”

Pike ‘s brow furrows.

“In a… good way, or…?”

“I was playing chess with him the other night and he said they’d been writing a few letters to each other. Just, small things.”

“... Well, I’ll be damned,” the captain breaks into a grin, matching that of his second in command’s.

 

Over a Hundred days after the Sixth Signal

 

It was time.

He’d shaved. He’d groomed.

The uniform felt heavy, but also a comfortable weight as it stretched over his shoulders. He met his own reflection in his quarters mirror.

“I’m doing my best,” he murmurs. “I hope you can see me, hear me, like your mother did when she visited.”

He straightened his uniform with a tug.

Pike’s voice called for him over the com. There was a… warmth to it.

He knew it, in that moment, even without seeing it outside the window.

“Michael,” Spock whispered. “ _Michael.”_

 

\----Fin


End file.
